Eric Holder

* “Taking the bar is like riding a bike. A bike that’s on fire.” Never before has there been a better way to describe what it’s like to take the bar exam. Here’s how some recent examinees were able to survive. Miraculously, no one preemptively sent a letter like this. [California Lawyer]

* DLA Piper is entering into happily married bliss with Davis, a 260-lawyer firm from the Great White North. An April wedding is planned. The couple is registered with American Lawyer and Vault. Give them a few loads of loonies! [Am Law Daily]

* Attorney General Eric Holder took to the op-ed pages to announce the Department of Justice’s official take on the constitutionality of marriage equality in America: “Nothing justifies excluding same-sex couples from the institution of marriage.” [USA Today]

* Speaking of Eric Holder, the attorney general released another official announcement yesterday. Ben Mizer will take over as chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. (For what it’s worth, people are making a huge deal over the fact that he’s gay.) [Metro Weekly]

* If you’ve missed a law school application deadline, don’t worry, because there are ways you can boost your chances of getting in. Having a pulse is only 98 percent of the battle — you’ll also need a tuition check. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News & World Report]

* Elizabeth Wurtzel is getting a boob job. Oh, and she has cancer. But her essay makes it clear that she’s way more focused about moving to a D cup. [Vice]

* Remember when Eric Holder ended the scheme that let federal and local law enforcement divvy up forfeiture proceeds? Well, not so fast my friend. [LFC360]

* Federal judges investigating an extramarital affair between a prosecutor and an ATF agent. Because the only one who’s supposed to get rogered in the criminal justice system is the defendant. [The Florida Times-Union]

* Law school grad wants to pay someone to actually teach him or her how to practice law. Because obviously the last $150K+ didn’t do it. Since this may get taken down, we’ve got a screenshot of the post on the next page. [Craigslist]

Kinney is currently running an exclusive search for an Asia GC role at a well known tech start-up company, based in Shenzhen. This company has received significant recent praise for their new smart phone device in leading medial outlets, such as the New York Times, TIME, Mashable, Wired, Yahoo, and Forbes, among others.

* “I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch.” During the first day of her Senate Judiciary hearing, our would-be attorney general was cool, calm, and collected while delivering the news that she’s not Eric Holder. [National Law Journal]

* Just how many retweets does it take for a law student at Oklahoma Law to convince Steven Adams of the Oklahoma City Thunder to go with her to law school prom (i.e., Barrister’s Ball)? Apparently only 1K. Come on, be her date, Steve! [FanSided]

* After being arrested on bribery charges, New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has decided to take a leave of absence from personal injury firm Weitz & Luxenberg — and to think, he was originally hired “to bring prestige to the firm.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* “Chess trains you to always think of the worst-case scenario. A lot of the time, that’s what lawyers are hired to do—to think, ‘What’s the worst case and how can I manage it?’” The youngest Debevoise associate moonlights as a chess champ. [Am Law Daily]

* Sue Ann Arnall, the ex-wife of billionaire Harold Hamm who first rejected a $975 million alimony check earlier this month and later cashed it, still thinks she should be able to appeal her divorce decree. This woman’s got some real chutzpah. [Bloomberg]

* “She’s kind of like Eric Holder in a skirt.” Well then. No one else really seems to care about longtime prosecutor Loretta Lynch’s nomination for the position of replacement top dog at the Department of Justice, but hey, maybe that’s actually a good thing. [National Law Journal]

* If you’re lucky enough to have power, then boy, Dewey have a wonderful longread for you to take a look at on this “historic” snow day. It turns out that this failed firm’s management painted a “rosy picture” to mask an “ugly truth.” [ABA Journal]

* Should you submit a law school application with a crappy LSAT score without first telling the schools that there will be another, hopefully better LSAT score coming? Please. They’ll be thrilled you have a pulse. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* Dentons is on the verge of finalizing a mega-merger that would make the combined firm the largest in the world, beating out even Biglaw behemoth Baker & McKenzie. Which law firm is Dentons wooing this time? [Wall Street Journal]

* “We say law school is expensive, but it’s not expensive for everybody.” People who do poorly on the LSAT finance their classmates’ schooling, and thanks to this chart, now we know what the cost of a low LSAT score really is. [Bloomberg Businessweek]

* Senate hearings for Loretta Lynch are scheduled to begin next week, but thus far, she’s only received eight letters in support of her nomination for AG. Eric Holder, who is apparently far cooler than she is, received tons of ‘em. Aww. [National Law Journal]

* The next edition of the Am Law 100 will soon be released, but until then, Am Law is sating our desire for rankings with little tidbits of interesting information. This just in: Apparently Weil Gotshal posted a major, double-digit increase in PPP. [Am Law Daily]

* “There is a large overhang of unemployed law graduates looking for jobs. Whether employers will hire them over 2015 grads is hard to predict.” Which is the lesser of two evils: dumber law grads or law grads with huge résumé gaps? [CBS News]

* AG Holder puts a stop to the government’s Equitable Sharing program, which was a nice way of saying the “police stealing things from people” program. [Washington Post]

* School chancellor: “After careful consideration, I’ve concluded that enlisting our students as confidential informants is fundamentally inconsistent with our core values.” Would have been better to have figured that out before a student died while acting as an informant. [Redline]

Scantron* A modest proposal for a new course evaluation form. [LawProfBlawg]

* An interview with former Senator George Mitchell. Did you know he turned down Justice Breyer’s seat because he wanted “to pass significant health care legislation.” The appropriate 90s response is to cue Nelson Muntz. [Coverage Opinions]

* George Washington may have doomed your smartphone privacy. But if it makes you feel any better he probably didn’t mean to. [Redline]

* California lawyers are 35 percent more in debt than they were 6 years ago. [Cal Lawyer]

* “He sent three clients explicit text messages that included photographs of his erect penis.” Fun addendum: if you read the full opinion, because the associate wrote off his time for sex that was, rightly, the firm’s 8.4 violation! I hope they weren’t the ones who turned him in. [Legal Profession Blog]

* A panel of legal analysts weigh in on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to succeed Eric Holder as Attorney General and discuss what her nomination means in the context of civil rights. [RH Reality Check]

* Do you need a live CLE lecture? Pick up 12 credits and grab some drinks with some ATL editors afterward. [Above the Law]

When was the last time you took a second look at your student loans? If you’re like most borrowers, you probably try hard not to think about them. After all, dwelling on your debt isn’t going to make it go away any faster. Or is it?

* “Perhaps Congress should have called this the Sarbanes-Oxley Grouper Act.” Based on the justices’ reactions during oral argument, it seems like SCOTUS isn’t taking the bait in the Yates case. [WSJ Law Blog]

* It seems that President Obama still hasn’t made a decision on who he wants to replace Eric Holder as attorney general. Maybe the results of the midterm election made him change his mind. [Legal Times]

* Jay Z may have 99 problems, but this champagne deal ain’t one because Cooley helped to seal the deal. If Armand de Brignac is good enough for Queen Bey, it’s good enough for this Biglaw firm. [Am Law Daily]

* Students at the University of South Dakota School of Law are wondering whether they’re receiving a good legal education considering they’re being trained to pass the “easiest [bar] in the nation.” [The Volante]

* Kenneth Desormes of Connecticut was charged after trying to eat the results of his breathalyzer test. He may be the same Kenneth Desormes who tried to get his law school to admit to fraud. [Hartford Courant]

* Will we have a nominee for Attorney General Eric Holder’s position “shortly after the election”? Per a White House spokesperson, our lame-duck Congress might just get a chance to confirm America’s next top lawyer. [WSJ Law Blog]

* In the wake of an associate general counsel’s suicide last week, Deutsche Bank has taken steps to further separate its legal and compliance teams to tamp down on its “legal and regulatory headaches.” Well then. [Corporate Counsel]

* David Tresch, Mayer Brown’s former chief information officer, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for his role in bilking the firm out of $4.8 million. Hey, it could’ve been worse, says his lawyer, whose client got off relatively easily. [Am Law Daily]

* Thanks to the rise of the “energy phenomenon,” law schools have started to offer various classes focusing on oil and gas law in the hopes of making their graduates employable. Good luck with that. [Times Online]

* If you plan to retake the LSAT, you need to study smarter. Don’t sweat it too much, though — it’s not like you’ve got a lot of competition trying to apply to law school. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* “I think we have to be concerned that almost all of us are from two law schools.” Justice Clarence Thomas thinks that the Supreme Court bench ought to be more diverse. [New York Times]

* The DoJ expanded its recognition of gay marriage by adding six states to its roster of those newly entitled to federal benefits — now more than half the country. Yay! [Bloomberg]

* Former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler has withdrawn from consideration as a nominee for Eric Holder’s job as AG. She and her shoe collection will remain at Latham. [WSJ Law Blog]

* [I]t’s profound that we have not made much progress on that front in the legal profession.” There’s still an income gap between men and women in the law, and it gets worse over time. [National Law Journal]

* Come sail away, come sail away, come parasail away with me. This former Biglaw associate found that life slaving away at a law firm wasn’t her paradise, so she decided to move to the beach. [Am Law Daily]

* The Fifth Circuit is allowing the Texas voter ID law to be enforced during the upcoming election, even though it was recently struck down by a federal judge. After all, “preserving the status quo” is very important down south. [Bloomberg]

* We suppose that’s why the Supreme Court stepped in to make sure that abortion clinics in Texas were allowed to reopen following their shut down. Take that, Fifth Circuit. [New York Times]

* AG Eric Holder is showing off some fancy legal footwork before he walks out the door. Federal prosecutors can no longer ask defendants to waive their IAC claims when pleading guilty. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Davis Polk & Wardwell is a Biglaw firm where hotties roam, and it looks like this top Justice Department prosecutor who started his career there is returning home there to roost. [DealBook / New York Times]

* It’s the debt: With headlines like “Law school applications plummet – at U of L too,” the University of Louisville School of Law can’t even convince alums from its undergrad school to attend. [Courier-Journal]

* Amal Alamuddin changed her name to Amal Clooney on her firm’s website. It’s as if she wants to rub the fact that she’s a human rights lawyer who just got married in everyone’s face. [New York Daily News]

* Now that we know Eric Holder is resigning, there’s been speculation as to where he’ll go next. The obvious choice is a return to Covington & Burling, but he could still surprise everyone. [National Law Journal]

* “Judicial campaign cash is burning a hole in the Constitution.” State court judges are pumping money into their election campaigns, and some have been left to wonder about its true price. [New York Times]

* Details have emerged as to conditions that must be met for Bingham McCutchen’s proposed merger with Morgan Lewis: partner promises, de-equitizations, and forgivable loans, oh my! [Reuters (sub. req.)]

* In the wake of Dean Makau Mutua’s decision to step down at Buffalo Law, a “deep rift” among faculty has been brought to light. The school’s future doesn’t seem as “bright” as we were one told. [Buffalo News]

* A former law student who was falsely identified as a porn star on the radio had her day in court and pulled out a win. Here’s the money shot: she’s walking away with $1 million in damages. [Kansas City Star]

* Solicitor General Don Verrilli may be a frontrunner to replace Eric Holder as attorney general, but the competition seems to be stiff. Kamala Harris, anyone? [USA Today]

* FBI Director James Comey is annoyed by Apple and Google marketing their encryption prowess for privacy’s sake — it’ll “allow people to place themselves beyond the law.” [WSJ Law Blog]

* White & Case just hopped aboard the onshore outsourcing train with its announcement that it would open a services center in Tampa, Florida. The move will create about 100 jobs, but we’d love to know how many it’s negating. [Tampa Bay Times]

* Slater & Gordon, the world’s first publicly traded law firm, has been on an “acquisition spree” in England. Earlier this month, it picked up patent practice, and now it’s in talks with a litigation shop. [Am Law Daily]

* “Law school is a major gamble,” and people are more informed, but that somehow isn’t stopping people from applying. This is a great article to read if you’re still considering going all in. [New York Observer]

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